Pakistan Information & News

Pakistan could see the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS among the general population due to a combination of high-risk behaviour and limited knowledge, warns the latest report from the UN joint programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). The UNAIDS policy position report entitled, ‘Intensifying HIV Prevention’, and released on Monday, has called for urgent prevention programmes to limit HIV transmission within, and beyond, high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users and sex workers. According to the National AIDS Control Programme (NACP), some 2,943 HIV/AIDS cases have been reported since the programme started in 1986, of which 321 were full-blown AIDS cases. The programme also records a 7:1 male to female ratio. However, estimates of HIV/AIDS cases in the country, according to UNAIDS, go as high as 70,000 to 80,000.
The UNAIDS report noted, a major epidemic has already been detected among injecting drug users in the southern port city of Karachi, where 23 percent of users were found to be HIV positive in 2004. At the same time, a survey of sex workers in the country’s main trading city of Karachi showed that only 2 percent of female sex workers used condoms. One in five sex workers could not recognise a condom or did not know that condoms could prevent HIV/AIDS, the report maintained.
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